The verge practice

30

Kathy stirred with the first glimmer of grey dawn through the little windows. She could hear nothing, no dawn chorus through the heavy glazing, only the soft hum of the refrigerator and ducted airconditioning, and was filled with a sense of dread about theday ahead.

At one point she thought she heard the faint murmur of a vehicle starting up, then nothing but more long silence. Noticing a small intercom grille beside the door, she went over to it and pressed her thumb on the button. After a while the speaker crackled and George’s voice said, ‘Morning.’

‘What’s going on, George? It’s seven-thirty. I need to go.’ ‘Patience. There’s food in the fridge and cupboards. Make yourself some breakfast.’ ‘I don’t want breakfast, I want…’ But the line had gone dead.

She found some orange juice, and ate a piece of bread and marmalade, discovering that, despite a lingering nausea in the back of her throat, she was hungry.

Eight o’clock came and went, and Kathy experienced an odd sense of detachment, imagining the reactions when she failed to keep her appointment with Commander Sharpe. She tried the intercom again.

‘Hello? Luz, George?’ ‘Patience,’ George’s voice repeated. ‘Watch TV. Read a book.’

She made a cup of coffee, and pictured the scene in Sharpe’s office, the angry call to Brock, the consternation in Queen Anne’s Gate. Presumably, Brock had been told about her trouble in Barcelona. What was he thinking now, that she’d done a bunk? The police conference was starting today, she remembered, and she imagined Sharpe and the other top brass in full uniform discussing her case between sessions. The first of the working parties would be presenting their paper that afternoon. Hers was due the next day. She switched on breakfast TV and watched, like a prisoner spying through a keyhole, the normal world outside, remote and unattainable.

Half an hour later she stopped pacing and tried the intercom again. ‘George, I want to speak to Luz. Put her on, please.’

‘Sorry, she’s busy. We’re in the middle of delicate negotiations. She says you’re to stay calm and not worry. She’ll work things out, but it may take some time. And there’s no point buzzing me all the time. Save it for an emergency. You’ve got plenty of grub down there and stacks of channels. Put your feet up, watch a movie.’ He clicked off.

What negotiations? Were they bargaining for her life? She paced around the flat again, searching for something, an access cover, a floor duct, anything that might give her an outlet to the world outside. Nothing. The only possibility for breaking out seemed to be to find something to smash through the glass of a window. She felt for the tea-knife in her pocket and stared at the stone wall, wondering how many years it would take her to dig her way out.

By ten Brock was in a cold sweat. He’d had no contact with Kathy since Friday night, sixty hours earlier. She had seemed disappointed that the Verge investigation had been shut down, but not unduly so. Then they had parted and he had thought no more about it until he got the phone message on Sunday afternoon that one of his officers had gone berserk in Barcelona, and would he kindly get his arse back to London. He had had no sleep since. He had gone himself to meet her plane at Heathrow, but a cloudburst had jammed traffic on the M4 and by the time he had arrived the passengers were already dispersing. British Airways confirmed that she had been on the flight, and he had assumed she was making her way back to her flat in Finchley. He drove there, and spent half the night sitting outside the building, phoning people until his batteries ran down. Her phone wasn’t answering, and no one else he could think of-Bren, Leon, Suzanne, Linda Moffat-had heard from her. At three a.m. he went home, thinking she might be waiting for him there. She wasn’t, and he raised the alarm.

When Sharpe phoned at three minutes past nine to find out why the hell DS Kolla hadn’t turned up for her appointment, Brock informed him that she was now listed as missing. ‘Missing?’ Sharpe had growled. ‘Missing in the head, or what? Christ, Brock, this was supposed to be your star. What’re the rest of your cowboys like?’

When he’d rung off, Brock had sent Bren to Finchley to gain entry to Kathy’s flat, to see if there were any clues as to her whereabouts there. Apart from an altercation with a neighbour who thought he was a burglar, Bren had nothing to report. There was no sign that Kathy had returned to the flat, and nothing apart from a scribbled note of plane times to connect to the events of the weekend.

If only she’d got engaged to Leon, Kathy thought, and he’d bought her a very large diamond engagement ring, she might have been able to cut her way through the glass. She lifted the small iron she’d found in a cupboard and extended her arm. In her left hand she was gripping a steel leg that she’d managed to detach from a chair. She swung the iron at the glass. There was a solid bang that jarred her arm and reverberated through the structure of the building; a star formed in the glass. She tried again, and the star spread. With the third blow the glass shattered. But this was only the first of three layers.

She heard feet on the stairs and ran towards the door, dropping the iron and lifting the chair leg to shoulder height. She pressed herself flat against the wall alongside the door and waited. The door burst open and she swung her weapon, but there was no one there.

A voice outside in the hallway said, with a weary sigh, ‘What do you think this is, James bleeding Bond? Come on, luv, I’ve been around too long. Back off.’

Feeling somewhat sheepish, Kathy stepped away from the door and George appeared, a small automatic in his hand, aimed in the general direction of her midriff. ‘Ooh

…’ he frowned at what she was holding. ‘That’s an early Eames prototype that is. Worth a bomb. Hope you haven’t done any permanent damage. Luz’ll kill you.’

‘I was thinking that might be the general idea,’ Kathy said, her heart thumping from the adrenaline.

He clucked scoldingly. ‘I told you to be patient.’

‘Where is she, George?’

‘Do you want me to cuff you to the bench?’

‘No.’

‘Well behave then. Watch telly, have some food. You look like you could use it. There’s some choice stuff in the fridge. I bought it myself.’

‘Why are you getting mixed up in this, George? You’re on parole. They’ll put you back inside forever. Let me out now and I’ll do the best I can for you.’

‘Save it.’ He stepped back and slammed the door closed behind him.

It was late afternoon before George appeared again. He knocked on the door and pushed it open cautiously. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Where to?’ she asked, suddenly reluctant to leave the security of her prison.

‘Where do you want to go?’

‘Queen Anne’s Gate.’

‘Okay.’ He turned on his heel and she hurried after him. When she reached the top of the spiral staircase she had the impression that the house was deserted. She noticed a large painting had been taken down from the wall of the studio. They continued on up to the entry pavilion, and George held the passenger door of the car open for her. Her backpack was on the seat. She got in and they set off along the misty autumn lanes, passing the village pub, its lights on for the evening trade.

When they reached the M25 Kathy said, ‘Come on, George. What’s happening?’

‘She’s gone. You won’t be seeing her again, none of us will. She just needed a bit of time to get clear.’ He glanced over at Kathy, her expression suspicious in the wash of passing lights.

‘What, no amazing corpseless death?’

‘No. She always knew it might come to this. After the opening of Marchdale she thought she was in the clear, but she couldn’t be sure. There was always the chance of some bloody-minded copper or reporter figuring it out.’

‘Thanks.’

‘So she had arrangements in place. She’s still got her money, of course, and by now she’s a long way away and somebody else. There’s no chance of catching up with her this time.’

‘Are you really letting me go, George?’

‘Yeah, really. I advised against it, you might like to know. Loose end, I said, but she didn’t see it that way. She wants the cops to know, and not be able to say or do a thing about it. Otherwise, she said, it would be like designing a building and not having anyone know it’s yours. She said this was her last big design.’

‘What makes you so sure they won’t do anything?’

‘We’ll see, shall we?’

‘What about Madelaine and Charlotte? How do they feel about all this?’

‘They know nothing. Nobody does, except you and me, and I’ve got a watertight alibi for the last twenty-four hours.’

Kathy was silent, thinking. They came to the M4, but then, at the next junction, turned off at the signs to Heathrow. ‘Hang on,’ she said. ‘This isn’t the way.’

‘I’ll drop you off at the taxi rank here.’ He felt in his pocket and produced some cash that he handed to her. ‘Luz told me to look after you. Here you go.’ He pulled over to the kerb. ‘Goodbye, Kathy. As far as I’m concerned, none of this happened.’

She watched him roar away, then walked over to the taxi queue and caught a cab into town. As it pulled to a halt at Queen Anne’s Gate, she looked up at the brightly lit windows and wondered what sort of reception she would get.

The first person she bumped into in the corridor was Bren, who goggled as if seeing someone risen from the dead.

‘Kathy! We’ve been looking everywhere. What happened to you?’

‘It’s a long story, Bren. Is Brock about?’

‘In his office, yeah. You’d better get up there. Are you okay? No damage?’

‘I’m fine. Catch up later.’

But Bren came with her up the stairs all the same, as if she might disappear once again.

Dot’s desk was empty, and Kathy knocked on Brock’s door. There was a muffled ‘Come’ and she pushed it open. Brock was bending over a pile of papers. He straightened with a cry, and, in a spontaneous gesture that took her by surprise, grabbed her and pulled her to him.

‘Kathy! I thought…’ He hugged her for a moment, then stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, embarrassed now at this display. ‘I really thought…’ Then he seemed to force a frown across his face. ‘Dear God, you’ve had us in a panic. What happened to you?’

Kathy turned to Bren, standing behind her in the doorway. ‘I need to talk to Brock alone.’

He nodded and closed the door softly behind him. Kathy and Brock sat down, and she told him her story.

At the end of it he shook his head. ‘I don’t know where to begin, Kathy. It’s like some textbook exercise on how to make every mistake under the sun. They’ll be using this at Bramshill for training purposes, and no one’ll believe it could actually be true.’

Kathy lowered her head, accepting the inevitable.

‘… dashing off without talking to me first. Not saying a word!’

‘I thought that would only make things worse, involving you,’ she offered, trying to sound contrite.

‘No back-up, no explanation. Where did that leave us when things went wrong?’

He went on, twenty-four hours of sleepless anxiety resolving itself into anger and dismay. Kathy said as little as possible, answering the odd point, making necessary explanations about some of the more lurid disasters, the break-ins, the drunk driving.

‘And how you could then, knowing what you did, have agreed to get into that car with Diaz and Todd…’

‘I needed evidence,’ she said reasonably. ‘I knew I was about to be kicked off the force. I needed something concrete.’

He shook his head in despair. ‘It’s not the first time, Kathy. I sometimes think you have some kind of death wish…’

But she sensed the anger fade and something else take its place, a sort of astonished admiration, not so much for her as for Charles Verge.

‘He really did that? I had no idea. And none of them knew? No one recognised him, his mother, his daughter…? It’s incredible.’

‘You do believe it, don’t you?’

‘Yes…’ He was thinking of Gail Lewis’s story of the hermit crab dragging around the wrong shell. Yet she, like everyone else, had misinterpreted the image. ‘Yes, I do.’

When the interrogation was over, Brock poured them both a scotch and sat back, thinking.

‘Lizancos will have destroyed his tapes and files, we can be sure of that. But Luz Diaz couldn’t have lived at Briar Hill for the past few months without leaving DNA traces, no matter how well they’ve cleaned the place.’

‘I thought of that,’ Kathy agreed, ‘but even if we found Verge’s DNA in the house, it wouldn’t help, would it? We know he was there before he disappeared.’

‘Depends on the traces, and where they are.’

He reached for the phone and called in Bren, instructing him to get a warrant and take a SOCO team out to the Diaz house as quickly as possible. ‘It seems she’s disappeared. You’re looking for her traces and those of third parties. We know George Todd has been there recently, and so has Kathy. We want to know who else has.’

Bren looked curiously at Kathy. ‘Are we looking for Diaz, chief?’

‘Yes. Put out a full alert.’

‘Right. You coming to the house?’

‘Maybe later. Kathy and I have another appointment to keep, and some rehearsing to do before we go.’

The facade of the conference venue was lit up with floodlights and carried a large banner bearing the Metropolitan Police logo and the motto Protect and Respect: Embracing Diversity. The taxi dropped them among waiting limousines and they made their way up the steps to the entrance. A steward directed them to a side corridor, and they caught glimpses into a main hall filled with suits and uniforms, glasses and canapes in hands. They came to a room marked Conference Meeting Room Number 2, knocked and went inside. There was no one there. On the table were sheets of notes abandoned from an earlier meeting. On one Kathy saw the heading Crime Strategy Working Party, and realised with a little shock that her own committee must have been here, preparing for its presentation the following day.

The door opened and two men in uniform came in. Kathy felt their unsmiling curiosity as they examined her before they turned to Brock. The first man introduced Brock to the second. Kathy missed the name, but caught the title, Deputy Commissioner, and saw the badge of rank on his shoulders. Then the first man was speaking to her.

‘I’m Commander Sharpe, and you must be DS Kolla? Sit down.’ He waved to seats at the end of the room. ‘You’d better tell us your version of events, Sergeant. Quickly if you please.’

Kathy did her best, but in that setting, faced with the two sombre uniforms, she felt as if she were recounting some kind of lurid fairytale.

‘…I was concerned that some sections of the press believed that Charles Verge was still alive,’ she said, following a line that Brock had suggested, ‘and I thought they might eventually get to hear of Dr Lizancos and his clinic. I thought this was one important line of inquiry that we hadn’t been able to complete when the case was closed, and I believed that it might eventually rebound on us. However, I was aware that the Barcelona police, one captain in particular, was shielding Dr Lizancos, and I knew our direct approaches had been fruitless. Given the sensitivity of the matter, I decided to mount an operation on my own initiative, without involving any of my colleagues, as a form of insurance.’

In this fairytale, ‘break and enter’ became ‘covert admission’, and the doctor’s abandonment of his clinic at Sitges a compelling reason for further ‘provident inquiries’ at his home in Barcelona. The two senior officers remained stony-faced throughout this, reacting only when she came to the revelation of Charles Verge’s transformation into Luz Diaz. This produced a snort from Sharpe, a look of quizzical disbelief from his colleague.

At the end there was a long silence, then Sharpe said, ‘I think I can truly say that that is the most outlandish story I have ever heard. Do you believe it, Brock?’

‘I’m rather afraid I do, sir,’ Brock murmured.

The Deputy Commissioner leaned towards Sharpe and whispered something. Sharpe nodded and said, ‘Step outside, will you, Sergeant.’

Kathy got to her feet, feeling angry and helpless, and made for the door. She stood outside in the corridor for twenty minutes, watching the girls pass up and down with trays of glasses. The muffled roar of conversation from the main hall was louder, and she wondered if the members of her committee were in there, Shazia in her Hijab sipping orange juice, Jay with cropped hair knocking back the champagne. Jay-she remembered their broken date for Saturday night, and thought she must contact her, wondering what she could possibly say.

Just then, Commander Sharpe stuck his head out of the door and called her back in.

She took her seat, unable to tell from their expressions what they were thinking.

‘As I understand it,’ Sharpe began, ‘there is absolutely no physical evidence to support anything that you’ve told us, Sergeant.’ He raised an eyebrow, inviting a reply.

‘No, but a forensic examination of Ms Diaz’s house…’ She stopped, seeing him shake his head.

‘DI Gurney has just phoned in. When he arrived at the house he found it ablaze. The fire crews should be there by now, but it seems likely that the building will be completely destroyed…’ He paused while Kathy absorbed this, thinking with a sense of shock how final this was, the destruction of his first house, a sign to her and everyone else that the game was over now.

‘… And that being the case, there appears to be no possibility that any kind of corroboration for your story will ever be forthcoming. Am I right?’

‘It’s possible. But we do know what Verge looks like now.’

Sharpe winced, as if he still found this too much to swallow. ‘Correction-we know what Diaz looks like. We only have her word for it that she is, or was, Charles Verge.’

‘George Todd knows.’

‘Maybe, but will he tell us? Not likely, I think. And so we have decided that it would be damaging and highly irresponsible to make your suspicions known beyond these four walls.’

He saw the protest flare in Kathy’s eyes and said coldly, ‘Do you want to remain in the service, Sergeant?’

She took a deep breath, feeling the colour burning in her cheeks. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘I understand that DCI Brock has told you in no uncertain terms how ill-conceived and dangerous your behaviour has been. By rights you should be the subject of a disciplinary review. However, in light of the somewhat extraordinary circumstances, and the accommodating attitude of the Spanish authorities, we shall say no more. You will tell no one, repeat, no one, of the events of the past seventy-two hours, is that clear?’

‘Yes, sir.’ They just want it all to go away, she thought, just as Luz Diaz had known they would, and for a moment she felt a flicker of sympathy for the stiff men in front of her, imagining them trying to explain to a roomful of incredulous reporters that, yes, Charles Verge was actually alive, but he’d turned into a woman and had disappeared, yet again.

They got to their feet, and as he passed her, the other senior officer, who had so far said nothing to her, murmured, ‘Never mind, Sergeant, it was a great story. I look forward to hearing you present your paper to the conference tomorrow.’

Panic seized Kathy. ‘Oh no. I won’t be doing that.’

‘Why ever not?’

‘Well, in view of what’s happened…’

‘Nothing’s happened. Isn’t that what we just agreed? Of course you must do it. Robert’s out there somewhere. I’ll tell him you need to speak to him, shall I?’